After Hours (InterMix)(25)

“Enjoy your flowers.”

I followed, frowning. “Wait. Did you really come here thinking you’d get laid? Off some stolen lilies and thirty seconds’ smooth-talking?”

Another smile. “Haven’t known you long enough to have expectations. Maybe I’ll try back again with roses sometime. I’ll be sure to bring a receipt.”

“Oh, f*ck you,” I said through a laugh. The f*cking nerve. But I was only half-insulted, the rest a mixture of flattered and amused.

He opened the door and I held it. With the possibility of witnesses strolling past in the hall, we both shrugged into semblances of friendly professionalism.

“Happy birthday.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

He gripped the door frame and leaned in real, real close, close enough to kiss. But his lips offered nothing but a smarmy-ass grin. “This is your room, so I’m letting you get your way—”

“Letting me?”

“Come by my place some weekend and maybe I’ll show you mine.”

“Your way doesn’t sound like it takes no for an answer.”

“You’re welcome to find out.”

“Good night, Kelly.”

He straightened. “See you beneath me on the gym floor tomorrow.”

Eyes narrowed, I watched him disappear around the corner, listening until the sound of his boots clomping down the steps faded to the thrum of my thumping pulse.

I shut the door, opening and closing my fists to quell a faint shaking.

He’d just said all that, hadn’t he? Not those cocky parting quips—that there was something between us. Something he wasn’t opposed to acting on.

Was I opposed? Yes. Definitely. Probably.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure what Larkhaven’s policy was, on office romance or whatever. Ward romance. Not that Kelly Robak seemed the type to let institutional mandates dictate whom he may or may not deign to make his conquest.

And he so was the conquesty sort.

That settled it—I would not be acting on anything with Kelly. No contact beyond the bounds of restraint training. From what he’d told me at the bar and just now by the door, he probably treated women like gas stations, in and out and on his way, thanks for the lube job. I glared at the flowers he’d left behind, annoyed that he’d taken me for someone whose professional dignity could be bought for a secondhand bouquet.

“Nice try, Robak,” I told the flowers.

I went down the hall to scrub my face and brush my teeth, deciding it had been one of my lousier birthdays. And if I went to sleep imagining Kelly restraining me with his shirt off, it was entirely by accident.





Chapter Four


I slept. Didn’t feel like it, but I must have, since I’d shut my eyes and when I opened them again it was light outside my window. Every joint creaked as I left my warm bed, and when I stripped for my shower I discovered a garden of ugly blossoms smudged all over my arms, a bruise for every color of the rainbow. I covered them with a long-sleeved shirt and hiked yoga pants up my achy legs, chugged cold coffee left behind in the machine in the common kitchen, and headed out to earn myself some fresh war wounds.

I didn’t see Kelly when I entered the gym, and prayed maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t show. I needed a day with no booze, no Kelly, no intoxication of any kind. Clarity.

“Good morning, Erin!” Audra must have been the only senior staffer who hadn’t gotten plastered at the party, as she seemed her usual boisterous self, her booming greeting ricocheting around my skull like a dodge ball.

“Morning.”

“You’re early. Want to help me out and spread these mats?”

“Sure.” The mere effort of dragging the first one from a pile by the wall had me sweating and flushed. The other attendees arrived shortly, and I straightened from squaring up the final mat just as Kelly appeared, blocking all the sunlight coming in from the hall with his big, ridiculous body.

Don’t even look at him, I told myself. Not his face or his snarky-ass smile or those stupid arms.

Of course that was a promise that couldn’t be kept. Within a half hour we were paired up, and I acknowledged him with a weary wave.

“Morning,” he said, oh-so casual.

“Yeah, morning.”

“Sleep well?”

“Very well. And all by myself, just how I like.”

He nearly grinned. I could see his lips straining to hold it in.